The border post between Iran and Iraq's Kurdistan region was high in freshly snowed-on mountains. The Kurdish customs officers insisted I drink tea with them and then stood waving until I'd disappeared around the corner. The road was potholed and narrow but it was all downhill. Sweet tasting meltwater streams sang by the roadside and a five-mile queue of parked trucks waited to cross the border.

Location: Erbil, Kurdish Region, Iraq
Day 976
Miles on the clock: 24,715

Iran is not starving. Iran is suffocating. While food is relatively ample and affordable, the oxygen of progress and prosperity is strangled by a paranoid theocracy. The Islamic Republic's partially self-imposed isolation has lead to inflation running at about 30 per cent and the looming collapse of an economy that, under differing circumstances, could be ranking among the largest in the world.

It was on a clear, chilly morning that I pedaled out of Dushanbe (Tajikistan’s capital) and into a winding, rocky valley. The road climbed past affluent, half-built holiday homes with small swimming pools and neat, incongruously-green lawns. Fiery, molting trees lined the increasingly narrow valley which became gradually steeper. After thirty miles I had a picnic lunch and realised my iPod was plugged into a hotel power socket back in the city. I left my bike with a gaggle of village girls and within two hours had thumbed a ride into town, collected the iPod and hitched back to the village.

Time drifted by in Bishkek as I waited for four visas. I passed the days wandering the city and researching the road ahead. Evenings were spent speaking with other cyclists over big plates of rice and warm glasses of cheap vodka. Most of the tourists I met were awaiting visas to leave Central Asia before the winter temperatures set in.

I clambered onto my nearly-nine-months vacant saddle and began a mad race westwards across Mongolia with my visa close to expiry. Old Geoff (my rusty, long-suffering bicycle) had been neglected while I worked in Beijing, walked to Mongolia and then horse-trekked. The muscles required to drive him had suffered neglect too.

Buying a horse involved being put in touch with my cousin's Mongolian friend's nephew's friend Puujee. I cycled the 50 miles from Ulaan Baatar to the village of Bayanchandmani where I met Puujee and was quickly whisked away into the hills in his van with his two giggling daughters. His herder friend lived in an isolated ger (traditional circular felt tent) and had three horses for sale.

I stood at dawn eyballing the chillingly indifferent portrait of Chiarman Mao and pondering the paths ahead. The man himself lay (dead) a hundred yards south of me with an already long queue of fans waiting to pay homage to his preserved corpse. The People's Liberation Army soldiers had just finished their daily flag hoisting ceremony over Tiananmen Square.

Following five months in Beijing, my bank account is a few pounds richer and my body a few pounds fatter. I arrived just as winter was setting in and made the decision to work and save for the season instead of immediately continuing north to Mongolia where the weather is significantly colder (Ulaan Baatar is the world’s coldest capital).

Many things have struck me during my time in Beijing. One of the most pleasantly surprising things is the ease with which a foreigner can arrive and quickly build a life. Admittedly, I did have one contact which helped but it took just two weeks of dabbling with part time English teaching/tutoring before I found a full-time, salaried job.

Location: Beijing, China Day 516 Miles on the clock: 18,115 Delving into rural China again; Guanxi Province; the G322 road from Nanning to Yangshuo; countless conical limestone karsts with lush skins of greenery serrating the horizon; the glowing emerald carpet of flat farmland connecting the karsts in the golden late-afternoon light; tidy little sheaves leaning together in freshly harvested fields; a long stretch of hopelessly pot-holed road; a meal of boiled starfish skin with an indifferent “chef” smoking, hocking and spitting a couple of yards away; a village woman spying from behind a tree as I perform my morning defecation al fresco; the northerly headwind which I was to battle most days on the ride to Beijing; a ten minute conversation with a women using online translation that ended in her asking if I speak Chinese for a third time; a road over rolling hills, loosely tracing a river, that brought me to Yangshuo.

Leaving Bangkok. Leaving crowds. Leaving chaotic streets. The small back roads to Cambodia were rutted and quiet. One last night in a Thai monastery. I was left to my own devices and shared a simple rice breakfast with the monks while two cats, both bald in patches, and one limping, stalked each other around a heap of laundry.